


then you smiled over your shoulder

by gingermaggie



Category: Happy Death Day (2017)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Prequel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 16:57:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12486412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gingermaggie/pseuds/gingermaggie
Summary: Carter doesn't mean to make a habit of rescuing drunk girls. It just starts happening.Or: Tree and Carter wake up in the same dorm room many times. But they only meet once.





	then you smiled over your shoulder

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Death Day was a freaking incredible movie. 10/10, would recommend. It's not terribly scary, but a fantastic, heartwarming, hilarious college movie with added murder. I'm obsessed with the characters.
> 
> If you haven't seen the movie A) go see it, seriously, and B) use your own discretion as to whether you read this fic. It's not spoilery of any real big plot things, but it does reveal some small things about Carter and Tree's meeting that you don't learn immediately in the movie. 
> 
> \---
> 
> [Check out a translation of this fic into Chinese by Mia!!! ](http://wwangxiasheng.lofter.com/post/1e535c49_12e54130)
> 
> \---
> 
> Title from Say You Won't Let Go by James Arthur

Carter is not exactly awesome at parties.

He tries to be, kind of, freshman year, going to half-assed parties in the freshman dorms, choking down a couple beers, avoiding eye contact with girls, and feeling relieved when Ryan is finally ready to leave and he can go to bed. Sophomore year he doesn’t really go to parties, preferring to spend his nights in the library catching up on homework or holed up watching Netflix with his then-girlfriend. The beginning of junior year, though, Ryan somehow scores an invitation to a freaking frat party and is too chickenshit to go himself, begging Carter to make the trek across town with him.

Frat parties, as a rule, are not any more fun than freshman parties. They’re louder, wilder, and honestly, smellier. What they do have, at least, is alcohol that's not beer. The first frat party they go to, Carter grabs one of those sweet fruity wine cooler things and settles into the corner to watch the other partygoers interact with the inherent distance of a nerdy outsider who definitely does not belong here.

And then he sees the girl.

She’s beautiful, obviously. Her dark brown hair is braided and twisted into a kind of crown on the top of her head. Her cheeks are flushed pink and her eyes are bright. She basically looks like she’s about to pass out. And she’s being pulled toward the stairs, stumbling, by a frat guy whose friends are hooting and clapping him on the back as he goes by.

Carter feels instantly sick. A nervous kind of energy starts coursing through his body, and before he even thinks about it he’s ditching his drink on some table and dodging between sweaty bodies, ending up at the bottom of the stairs just as the pair reaches them, blocking their way.

“Hey!” he says, bright and too cheery, gaze fixed only on the girl. She’s shifting a little under the guy’s arm, mouth twisted into a frown. Not trying to escape, but definitely not in a place to be enthusiastically consenting.

“Excuse us,” the guy says, trying to push around him.

“Hang on,” Carter says, putting his hand on the girl’s arm, light. He’s still looking only at her, trying to project trustworthiness. “We were in that class together last year, right? I’m Carter. We did that group project.”

The girl looks confused, because, well, he’s lying. Carter aims a meaningful look her way and hopes she’s coherent enough to catch it.

“Oh, hey,” he presses on before she can say anything. “Your friend was in that class too, whatshername, the one with the laugh? I think I saw her here too, we should find her, have a mini reunion.” He makes a show of looking around for the fictional friend.

“Hey—” the guy says, sounding irritated, and Carter’s heart is racing. This dude could absolutely snap him in half.

He continues anyway. He makes sure the girl is looking at him. She seems more alert now. “Do you want to go find your friend?” he asks, gentle as he can, and she nods. “Cool,” he says, gently pulling her away from the guy, who looks royally pissed. He nods at him, says, “See ya,” and walks away before he can really react.

They’re two steps away before the girl starts crying, mumbling _thank you, thank you, thank you_ over and over again. Carter whispers shushing platitudes until they reach a less populated area, and then he helps her dry her tears.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey, it’s okay. Hey. What’s your name?”

“Jackie,” she says.

“Okay, Jackie, who are you here with?”

“Dana and Laura.”

“Alright,” he says. “Let’s go find them.”

It takes them a little while to find Jackie’s friends, because Jackie continues to be spectacularly smashed and has no clue where her friends ended up or where her phone is. So for a while Carter just wanders around the party, Jackie gripping his hand with surprising strength, and they try to dodge the meathead who is still glaring every time he sees them.

Eventually, a pair of girls rush up and grab onto her, rapidly talking over each other about how worried they were and how many shots they had and how freaking hot Jordan looks tonight.

“This is Carter,” Jackie slurs, gesturing back at him. “He helped me.”

“That’s nice,” one of the girl says, patronizing and dismissive, and with a swirl of perfume and hairspray they’re gone.

And that’s that. Carter doesn’t think about it much, doesn’t get the shit kicked out of him by any frat guys, doesn’t end up going to any more parties for a while. When he does go, he tends to keep an eye on anyone who seems to be in trouble—drunk girls getting pressured by guys, drunk guys getting pressured by girls, people getting goaded into drinking too much or starting to take off their clothes, and everything in between. Half the time when he thinks a girl might be in trouble and he pretends to be a friend she tells him to fuck off and goes back to making out with her boyfriend, which is fine by him. He’d rather check anyway.

Anyway, it doesn’t even happen that much—maybe once every three or four parties since the thing with Jackie.

It’s been a couple weeks since he’s even been at a party, but he just finished a huge paper for his American Lit class and Ryan insisted he needed to let off some steam—and then of course promptly ditched him to chase after sorority girls. So he’s just standing on the edge of the room, talking to a sophomore girl he knows from one of this gen ed classes when a glittery blur crashes into him.

His arms go up to catch the figure, automatic, and a girl is starting up at him through a mass of blonde girls, laughing her ass off.

“Heeeey,” she says, leaning into him.

“Hi,” he says, smiling despite himself.

“Hi,” she repeats, absolutely wasted out of her mind. She’s swaying a bit, tipping to one side, and he tucks her into his side, steering her towards a couch. He turns to say something to the sophomore—Sarah? Shannon?—but she’s vanished.

“You're kind of cute,” the girl says. “But you also look like a major nerd. But cute.”

Carter doesn't really know how to respond to that, so he doesn't. He gets the girl onto an abandoned couch, sitting down on the other end. She immediately sprawls out across the length of it, dumping her legs on his lap and kicking off her shoes.

“Okay, hey,” he says. “I’m Carter. What’s your name?”

“Tree,” she says, letting out a huge burp.

Carter tries his best to hide his delighted grin. “What?” he asks. “Three?”

The girl rolls her eyes like he’s a major idiot. “ _Tree_ ,” she corrects. “T-R-E-E.”

He’s still trying not to laugh. He’s not laughing. “Like, _a_ tree? Bark, leaves, the works?”

She shoots him an impressively withering look for a drunk girl. “It’s short for Theresa, dumbass.”

“Oh, yeah, I’m the dumb one for not making that connection.”

Tree flips him off, looking genuinely pissed for a second, but she ruins the effect by sitting up and sticking her tongue out at him.

“Okay, Tree,” Carter says. “Where are your friends? What are their names?”

She shakes her head. “Don’t got any,” she mumbles, leaning against his side.

“You’re here alone?” he asks.

“Yeah, let’s go with that,” she says.

“Okay,” he says. “Well, where do you live? I’ll walk you back to your house.”

She doesn’t answer.

“Tree?” he asks. He pokes her shoulder. “Tree.” She lets out a light snore, and he smiles again. “Okay. C’mon. Stand up. Tree?”

“Mmph,” is the only answer he gets. She’s still tucked into his side, but mostly standing, at least.

He tries again. “What’s your sorority?” he asks. “Where am I taking you?”

There’s another moment of silence. “Take me to your place,” she finally says, and lurches towards him like she’s trying to kiss him. He dodges the advance, clumsy, and smiles at her.

“You’re very pretty, Tree, but you’re also very drunk. Ask again later,” he adds.

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees a tall, dark-haired guy eyeballing Tree with a look in his eyes Carter isn’t a huge fan of.

“Okay,” he says. “Time to go. Seriously, Tree, where are we heading?”

The only response he gets is another light snore.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he says.

It takes some lifting and light dragging, four texts to Ryan, and ten minutes trying to download the Uber app, but eventually Carter has Tree back to his and Ryan’s building. Ryan has promised to spend the night in his car, based on a presumption of Carter’s intentions that are fundamentally misguided, but Carter isn’t complaining.

Ryan is…kind of the worst, but they’d been randomly placed together their freshman year and fallen into what Carter thinks of as roommate inertia. So yeah, Carter has to deal with terrible music and obnoxious, dickhead comments, but there are also Marvel movie marathons and pretty disgusting piles of shared nachos and the benefits of the evil you know. Plus, a dedication to trying to get Carter laid that is alarming but occasionally helpful in keeping Ryan out of the room.

He manages to wake Tree up enough to get her into the building, where she immediately starts trying to take off her pants.

“O—kay,” he yelps, pulling her along. He gets her hustled into his room, and she finishes peeling off her pants.

Carter turns around, trying not to look. There’s a crash somewhere behind him.

“Fuck,” Tree says.

Carter turns around and sees she’s knocked over a stack of books. She’s also stripped to just her underwear and bra.

“Okay,” he says again, and ducks around her to grab a shirt out of his clean laundry pile. He tosses it at her and she pulls it on automatically, getting momentarily stuck until he helps her slide her head through the hole.

“Alright,” he says. “Bedtime.”

She apparently has no objection, flopping easily into his bed and letting him pull the covers up over her legs. She tries one more time to pull him into bed with her, but he just smiles and slips away. He surprises himself with the thought, but—he has this odd feeling that this weirdass interaction might actually turn into something. A friendship, if nothing else. But definitely—something. The little he’d seen of Tree’s personality so far—boisterous, unselfconscious, a little bitchy—was certainly intriguing.

He picks up her pants and shirt, folding them carefully and leaving them on the desk with her phone. He loiters around for a few minutes, not sure what else to do. He feels, weirdly, like a host. Like he’s supposed to be doing something to entertain the girl passed out in his bed. Finally, he shakes his head, digs up a bottle of water to set out for her, puts on his own pajamas, and collapses into Ryan’s bed.

He skips his eight a.m. the next morning because Tree is still asleep when he gets up at seven, and it feels weird to wake her. Instead, he does some reading for another class, sits on Ryan’s bed playing games on his phone, stares at the ceiling feeling awkward.

He’s leaning under Ryan's desk to pick up one of the books Tree knocked down last night when her phone goes off, playing some obnoxious ringtone that jolts her awake and sends her scrambling for the device.

“Oh, hey,” Carter says, sitting up and glancing at her with a smile. “You’re up.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed! If you haven't seen the movie yet. Go see the movie. 
> 
> If you have any interest in Tumblr edits, here's my [HDD edit tag](https://thebluestgansey.tumblr.com/tagged/hddedit), which is present on my tumblr, [thebluestgansey](http://thebluestgansey.tumblr.com). Come say hi!


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